A Blind Eye (3 page)

F
irst time Corso opened his eyes, all he could see were flames dancing across a stained ceiling. The only sound to reach his ears was the groan and crackle of the fire. Unable to raise his head, he experienced a moment of doubt, wondering if perhaps he hadn’t died and gone to hell. He was still pondering this possibility and trying to move his extremities when the ebony wings folded around him and again the world turned black.

Second time he opened his eyes, dawn had begun to trickle in the side windows. He was able to raise his head far enough to prop it with his hand. His head felt as if someone were driving a sixteen-penny nail between his eyes, with measured rhythmic strokes, driving the point deeper and deeper into his brain. He was unable to breathe through his nose but remembered where he was. The old house with the No Trespassing sign tacked onto the door with roofing nails. Deserted. Front windows boarded over. He recalled Dougherty kicking in the door. Recalled her half dragging, half carrying him inside. And then lying there on the frozen floor and the candle in the darkness. The single flickering flame and the empty room. And then closing his eyes to make the hammering in his head go away. And then…

The third time he opened his eyes, he sat straight up and winced as a brain-tumor headache nearly threw him back to the floor. The fallen snow reflected halogen-bright through the side windows, and then he remembered it all. How Dougherty saved his life. He looked around. She lay at the other end of the fireplace, huddled in a heap beneath her cape. He remembered how she’d used the lighter he’d found to make her way through the deserted house looking for something to burn. How she’d found long empty drawers in the kitchen still lined with fancy paper. How she’d leaned the drawers up against the hearth and stomped them to splinters with her boots. He could see the violent shaking of her hands as she lit the crumpled paper and waited for the splinters to catch fire. And then the larger pieces of the drawers and then the kitchen cabinet doors, and then it started to get warm. And how he’d tried to get up but couldn’t and her soothing voice telling him to stay on the floor. How they were going to be all right. After that, things got spotty.

The fire was now reduced to a glowing bed of ash. One segment at a time, Corso levered himself from the floor, until he stood unsteadily on his feet. The air was warmer at the top of the room. His head reeled, and for a moment he thought he might pass out and crumple back onto the cold boards. Unsteady, he staggered over and put a hand on the brick fireplace. To the right of the fireplace opening, several thick brown boards lay stacked and ready, their ends splintered and spiked.

Moving slowly, Corso pulled back the rusted screen and piled the remaining boards onto the glowing embers in a crisscross pattern. For a moment nothing happened, and Corso feared he had smothered the fire. The new material did nothing but smoke and hiss. Then the thick, dusty smoke began to swirl up the chimney and, after an anxious moment, a single yellow flame poked its head from among the boards. A couple of crackles and, with a whoosh, everything caught fire at once. Corso closed the screen.

At his feet, Dougherty stirred but did not waken. Using the wall to steady himself, Corso made his way around the corner into the kitchen, where it was noticeably colder. His breath swirled about his head as he looked around. She’d burned everything that could be torn loose and fed to the fire. All that remained was the frame of what had once been a modest set of kitchen drawers and cabinets along the north wall.

Sliding his hand along the countertop, he crossed the kitchen to the back door. His reflection in the wavy glass upper panel of the door stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t recognize the face that peered back at him. A seeping green bruise ran completely across his forehead like a bloody headband. His eyes were blackened and nearly swollen shut. Everything below his nose was a solid sheet of thick coagulated blood. He pawed at his nose and was rewarded with a jolt of pain. He rested his forearms on the countertop and bowed his head, breathing deeply, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, until a voice from the other room startled him. “Corso,” it called.

He had to clear his throat three times before he could rasp, “In here.”

“You need to lie down.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You’re nowhere in the vicinity of okay,” she insisted.

As if to prove her wrong, Corso pushed himself off the countertop and staggered back into the front room. She was kneeling on the floor with pain in her eyes, rocking slightly, as if the repetitive movement might somehow distract her from her suffering. Corso sat on the hearth, bringing his face close to hers. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, without meaning it. “Except for my hands,” she said, bringing them out from under the folds of her cape. Her hands looked like they’d been boiled. Swollen and red, they seemed to have a life of their own. “I froze them last night. They burn like hell.”

“Keep them warm” was all Corso could think to say.

“You should see yourself,” she said through her teeth as she slipped her hands back under the cape.

“I have.”

She started to get up, but Corso put a firm hand on her shoulder.

“You saved my ass,” he said.

She tried to elbow his hand from her shoulder, but he held firm. “You gotta lay down, Corso. You got something busted up in your head. For a while there I was afraid you were gonna bleed to death on me.”

“You saved me,” he said again.

“We saved each other’s asses,” she said. “You carried me half a mile through a blizzard.” She winced at the memory. “Craziest damn thing I ever saw. All I did was start a fire and keep it going.”

As if on signal, the fire in the hearth collapsed upon itself with a rush of sparks. “Where’d you get the boards?” Corso asked.

“There’s a barn outside.” She shrugged her shoulders. “There was nothing left in here to burn, so I decided to try out there. I fell through the floor. That’s when I froze my hands. Ripping up the old floorboards and dragging them inside.”

Corso got to his feet. “We gotta keep the fire going. That’s how somebody’s gonna find us.”

Dougherty began to protest and get to her feet.

“Stay still,” Corso said. “I’m a little fuzzy, but I’m okay.”

He brought one hand to the top of his head, as if to keep it in place, and then eased across the room and pulled open the door. The bright white reduced his eyes to slits. He stood in the doorway gulping the frigid air. The storm had passed, leaving behind a wind-whipped blanket of white reaching nearly to the tops of the fence posts lining the driveway. He stepped out onto the porch and drew the door closed. His shoulders shuddered inside his coat. He rubbed his hands together.

For as far as the eye could see, the only marks on the surface of the snow were a ragged trail of footsteps leading to a leaning barn thirty yards north of the house. He walked slowly, lifting his knees high, trying not to jostle his head. Above him, boxcar clouds raced across a bright blue sky. The air twinkled with wind-blown snow crystals.

It was more of a shed than a barn. No more than a dozen feet across. Listing heavily to starboard. A rusted split rim and a broken rake hung from the right-hand wall.

She’d burned almost half the floor. Corso stepped inside and grabbed the broken end of one of the boards. The rotting wood crumbled in his hand as he forced it upward, pried it loose from its ancient nails, and then tossed it out into the trampled snow.

Wasn’t until he tried to kick the nearest full board loose that he realized the other half of the floor was newer. No dry rot here. Just solid lumber nailed on two-foot centers along its length.

Corso stepped carefully over the exposed floor joists, reached up over his head, and grabbed the rusted split rim hanging from the wall. Heavier than he’d imagined, the rim fell nearly to his knees before his muscles stopped its descent. A thick layer of rust crumbled in his hands as he retraced his steps. With a grunt he raised the rim above his head and brought it down on the nearest board. The board broke in two. Corso stepped to his right, repeating the process as he moved along, breaking the wood into two-foot lengths. By the time he’d worked his way to the rear of the building and back, his head was reeling and he thought for a moment he might pass out. His nose had begun to bleed again, sending an intermittent drizzle of blood down onto his shoes.

He dropped the rim to the floor and was bent at the waist, waiting for his vision to clear, when he first heard the sound. An engine. The blat of a diesel maybe.

Carefully he picked his way across the maze of broken floor and made his way outside. Shading his eyes from the glare, he scanned the horizon. Nothing. He stood still and listened, but the sound did not repeat itself.

After several moments he heaved a sigh, stepped back inside the shed, and continued tearing up the shattered pieces of wood, throwing them outside onto the pile. While the far side of the floor had covered nothing but dirt, this side was lined with black plastic.

As he worked his way toward the front of the shed, he began to realize that the black plastic was not a single sheet of material but instead a large folded package held together by long lengths of silver duct tape.

Curious now, he used the flat of his hand to press down on the upper layer. Beneath the black, something brittle shifted with a dry clack. Instinctively Corso pulled his hand back and peered into his rust-covered palm. Then he heard the noise again.

This time he was positive. The sound of a diesel engine at work sent him hurrying back outside. Out on the road, a bright yellow road grader sent a black plume into the sky as it moved along, pushing the snow before it.

Corso began to wave his arms, trying to catch the driver’s attention. A full minute of frenzied waving sent Corso to his knees in the snow, where he hung his head and watched the snow turn red, drop by drop. And then the blat of the horn, and when he looked up, one of the side windows of the road grader was open and a hand was waving.

He stayed on his knees as the huge machine backed up, turned its front wheels, and started down the driveway toward him. Above the roar of the machine, he heard Dougherty’s voice cry, “Yahoo!” He looked to his right. She was standing in the open doorway. She opened her mouth to speak, but by then Corso was already back inside the shed, finding the end of the duct tape and peeling it off. The pieces of plastic began to separate on their own. Corso reached down and yanked the top of the plastic apart.

The sight sent him reeling backward, tripping over one of the floor joists and falling heavily to the dirt. The roar of the diesel was closer now. Dougherty was shouting something into the wind. He climbed to his feet. His head throbbed as he shuffled back across the floor. He peeked. Quickly. Out of the corner of his eye. As if he might turn to stone. There it was. The ivory grin. The tufts of brown hair still stuck to the skull. The empty eye sockets staring back at him. He brought a hand to his mouth and turned away as his stomach turned over.

He moved carefully, making his way outside. The machine was right in his face now, idling as the driver popped open the door and began to climb down. He was a round-faced little guy wearing orange thermal coveralls and a red plaid hat with earflaps. One look at Corso stopped his descent. His satchel face folded itself into a frown, and then, without a word, he climbed back into his seat. He stuck his head out the side window. “You don’t look so good, buddy,” he yelled. Corso nodded his agreement. “I’ll send an aid car right out,” the driver promised. “You just take it easy till they get here.”

As Corso made his way over to the driver’s window, he heard the lock click on the inside of the door. He looked up at the driver’s gray stubbled face. “Better send the cops too,” he shouted. “There’s something in the shed they ought to see.”

P
lace has been deserted for the better part of fifteen years,” the sheriff said. “Ever since Eldred Holmes packed up his wife and kids and moved on.” She thought it over. “Back in the mideighties sometime. I can’t for the life of me remember where it was they were supposed to be moving to.” She looked back over her shoulder at the shed, which was now surrounded by yellow police tape and half a dozen deputies. “Doesn’t look like they got wherever they were going, though.”

“You think that’s them in there?” Corso asked.

She shrugged. “I peeked in and poked around a little before we sealed it off.” She looked down at Corso. “We don’t have our own lab or technicians. We’ve gotta wait for the state boys to show up. But the fake dental work looks a lot like Eldred Holmes to me.” Before Corso could ask the obvious question, she went on. “When we were kids, he used to scare the heck out of all the other kids. Had this big old set of snaggle teeth stuck out from his lips. Then, later on, he got ’em fixed. Had ’em pulled and a bridge put in. I know because he pulled it out and showed it to me once. Right in the middle of Royals Drugstore.” She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. “Looked a lot like the one in the mouth of that skull in there.”

Thirty yards away, two teams of emergency medical technicians emerged from the house, carrying Dougherty on a gurney. Her hands were wrapped like a boxer’s. The gurney’s wheels were unable to negotiate the snow, so they had to carry her toward the rear of the waiting aid car. She waved a pillowed hand at Corso. He waved back, as they folded the aluminum legs and slid her into the ambulance.

A black Lincoln Town Car nosed into the far end of the driveway. A plume of exhaust settled over the back half of the car like a cloak. The door opened. A thick-set man in a black overcoat stepped out of the car and began to make his way gingerly toward the house. The sheriff shaded her eyes with her hand.

Two-thirds of the way down the driveway, he spotted the sheriff and began to veer in her direction. She muttered something under her breath as he approached, but Corso couldn’t catch the words.

He was a blunt-featured man somewhere in his sixties. His eyebrows were grown out and curly, while his mustache was neatly trimmed. The overall effect lent him a somewhat scholarly quality. “Judge,” the sheriff said, without offering her hand.

“What do we have here, Sheriff?” he demanded.

“We’ve got some bones buried under the floor of the shed, Your Honor.”

Before he could ask another question, she said, “That’s all we know right now, Judge Powell. We’re waiting on the state boys to get a forensics team here.”

The judge set his jaw like a bass and started for the shed. The sheriff barred the way with her arm. He looked down at her arm with a mixture of anger and disdain.

“Don’t you dare—” he began.

She met his irate glare. “We’ve got an active investigation going on here, Judge.” She motioned toward the yellow tape surrounding the general area of the shed. “I’ve got it sealed off,” she said. “State Patrol hates it when they get a contaminated crime scene. Gets ’em thinking we’re a bunch of hicks.” She dropped her arm. “I’m gonna need to keep everybody out until they get here.”

His lower lip quivered as he swallowed whatever he’d intended to say next. Instead he took a deep breath and expelled the air through his nose in a pair of locomotive plumes. “You’ll keep me posted,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course,” she said.

He shot Corso a look and then went back to glaring at the sheriff.

“I’ll be in my office,” the judge said. “I’ll expect to hear from you before the end of the day.”

“The timelines are not under my control, Your Honor,” she said. “The state boys will—”

He cut her off. “By the end of the day,” he repeated, before turning on his heel and marching off. She stood silently, watching him make his way back to the car. Followed the big black car with her eyes until it was out of sight. Sighed.

“Richardson,” she called.

Across the trampled expanse of snow, a tall guy in a matching brown uniform turned toward the voice. Instead of the warm flaps-down model the sheriff was wearing, Richardson wore one of those state trooper military model hats with the leather strap so tight around his chin it was a wonder he could speak. His ears were as red as signal flags.

“Yes, sir,” he barked.

She cupped her hands around her mouth. “We gotta get these aid cars outta here. Clear the driveway.” She pointed to a white van with a satellite dish on the roof. “Start with those media types. Get ’em outta here.”

“Public’s got a right to know,” Richardson yelled.

“Which is why he called them?” she said under her breath.

She crooked a finger. Richardson marched over and stood stiffly at attention, staring out over the sheriff’s head. She stepped in close, speaking to the point of his collar. “First you get them the hell out of here. Then later we’ll talk about you calling them.”

He stiffened. “The right of the public to have free access—” he began to recite.

“Shut up,” she said through her teeth. “The rights of those poor people in the barn are what concerns me. However it was they came to be there…they have a right to some respect. They have a right to be treated with dignity.” Richardson’s thousand-yard stare never wavered as the sheriff continued. “What if they were people you knew? What if they were members of your family?” She patted him heavily on the shoulder and said, “Try to weigh that kind of thing against your great desire to be on television.” She patted him again, a little harder this time. “Who knows…maybe your better side will emerge.” Before he could respond, she went on. “Get the driveway clear. Remind the media types that there’s no parking on Hawthorne Road…especially in a snow emergency like this. If they park that damn van there, call Bob Sowers and have them towed. Once the aid cars leave, we can bring the rest of the cruisers back in.”

“Yes, sir,” he barked again, before turning on his heel and marching off into the melee. The sheriff sighed heavily as she watched him go and then shifted her gaze down to Corso, who lay strapped to a gurney at the rear of an orange and white aid car. The top third of his head was bandaged like the Mummy. His nose was packed with gauze.

She shook her head sadly. “The ‘sir’ stuff is Richardson’s way of reminding me that he doesn’t think sheriff is a job for a woman,” she said. “He ran against me last November. I beat him by thirty-seven votes. He’s gonna run again next year, so he’s trying to get himself on TV as much as possible.” She sighed again. “Probably gonna win too.” She grinned down at Corso. “Gulf War hero, you know.”

She was middle-aged, black hair, brown at the roots, crammed up under her winter hat. She could have been fat or she could have been slim—at that moment she was wearing too many layers of clothing to tell. The crinkles at the corners of her blue eyes put her somewhere in her late forties.

She read Corso’s mind. “I didn’t hire him, so I can’t fire him,” she said. “His father’s the chairman of the City Council. Clint Richardson’s the one who talked the council into making me take his kid on as deputy sheriff. Said I wasn’t making a strong enough impression in the community. Needed some new blood.”

Corso watched as the doors on the other aid car were closed. One guy stayed inside. The other three started Corso’s way. The last police cruiser was backing out of the driveway. “Done nothing but fight me on everything,” she said. “Won’t even wear a proper hat, for pity’s sake.”

“They’re his ears,” Corso offered.

“Wanted to carry a forty-caliber, and when I wouldn’t let him, he started loading his own thirty-eights with enough powder to either blow his hand off or kill somebody in the house next door.” She shook her head. “He just don’t get it.”

The sheriff put a hand on Corso’s shoulder. He turned his head in her direction. “Speaking of not getting it, Mr. Corso…you want to tell me what a world-famous writer and his photographer friend were doing driving around on a night like last night?” Corso shrugged. She leaned in closer. “Ole Swanson dead in his truck I can understand. Since his missus died last spring, Ole’s been getting so drunk every night it was just a matter of time before he did something stupid and ended up dead. But you, Mr. Corso, if you don’t mind me saying…you really ought to know better.”

Because his eyes were incapable of keeping up with the movement of his head, Corso averted them slowly. He watched as one of the trio of EMTs slipped and fell heavily in the snow. Watched as his buddies helped him to his feet, dusted him off, and then pulled him Corso’s way. Corso could feel her gaze on the side of his head.

“I guess I was looking for something,” he said.

“What was that?”

“A free lunch.”

The sheriff whistled under her breath. “A costly commodity.”

“Apparently so,” he said.

The EMTs checked that his straps were tight and then lifted him into the back of the ambulance. The sheriff stood in the doorway as they buttoned the gurney down.

“You think the whole family’s in there?” Corso asked.

“I didn’t want to touch anything,” the sheriff said. “But if you ask me, there was more than one set of remains in that bundle.”

“Yeah,” he said as the doors swung shut.